VARIETIES. 
369 
a steady enforcement. But they are by no means all that it has accom 
plished. Its remote or secondary effects, which I propose to point out, are 
equally important, and they are found in the influence upon our home 
manufactures and trade. 
It has often been claimed that the law was a tariff for protection to home 
adulteration, and while we shut out the evil in one way, we were equally 
exposed to it in the shape of home preparations ; were this even true, it is 
no argument against the law for keeping out foreign adulteration, as it is 
very evident that if both are equally bad, no pure medicine can be had by 
those who require them, while if we are certain the foreign are pure, we 
have a choice between the pure and the sophisticated. But I am satisfied 
that the amount of home adulterations have been over estimated, and that 
under the effect of this law they are decreasing daily, and perhaps mainly 
because the demand is decreasing. 
I have never believed, though it has been again and again asserted, that 
our medical gentlemen to any great extent, who buy and use most largely 
of this class of goods, have desired to buy and use inferior medicines, be- 
cause they were cheap, and my own direct intercourse and observation, as 
a druggist for five years, aside from a six years' experience in the profes- 
sion, has satisfied me of the correctness of my views. I speak of the country 
at large. 'Wherever it has been the case, it has been the result of ignorance, 
as to the appearance and physical properties of drugs that has led them 
into this error, an error in which, from a like ignorance, they have been 
kept by their druggist, who has been imposed upon by the bland assurance 
of the importer or jobber, which led him to take all things of a like name 
as of the same quality. There are those who buy because cheap, and pre- 
scribe, and perchance hope for success in the use of such remedies, but they 
are not found among our medical gentlemen of education and character and 
entitled to the respect and confidence of the community at large. The flood 
of light thrown upon this subject of adulterations of medicines by the re- 
ports to Congress ; by the report of Dr. Bailey, special examiner for the 
port of New York ; reports to the American Medical Association, and by 
various other writers in our pharmaceutical and medical journals, through 
the newspapers of the day, and various other means, to the people, has 
worked and is working a revolution in the drug trade at large. By a 
desire and growing necessity for a proper education of pharmaceutists and 
druggists, a man is no longer considered competent to sell, dispose and deal 
out medicinal articles affecting the health, life and happiness of his fellow- 
beings, simply because he can calculate a per centage, or make a profit. 
The reform in this department is, I know, but just beginning, though 
long needed, but it will progress, for public opinion demands, and will con- 
tinue to demand it. 
Physicians, professors of materia medica, and teachers of practical phar- 
macy and chemistry are feeling it, and the whole course of teaching upon 
this and kindred branches, has received more attention from both professor 
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